Notes for Programming Language Experts

Origins

The Wolfram Language is first and foremost an evolution of the symbolic language developed for Mathematica over the course of more than three decades. But it's considerably more than that—adding the knowledge, knowledge representation and natural language abilities of Wolfram|Alpha, as well as a new symbolic deployment mechanism created with the Wolfram Cloud.

Theoretical Foundations

From its earliest stages, the Wolfram Language was conceived as a general language for computation—based on foundational ideas about symbolic systems.

First Killer App: Math

The concepts of the Wolfram Language were first applied to the highly demanding area of mathematical computation in Mathematica—with outstanding success over the course of more than three decades.

Millions of Users before It Even Existed

In its precursors in Mathematica, the Wolfram Language has had millions of users for three decades—including many of the world's top researchers, and countless students and others.

Transcending Hardware

From its earliest origins, the Wolfram Language was built to follow principles, without compromising for the hardware limitations of the day (everything symbolic, infinite precision, etc.).

The Concept of Programming in Notebooks

Pioneered in Mathematica more than three decades ago, the Wolfram Language lets you program in interactive notebook documents that combine running code with output and publishing-quality typesetting.

Learning the Significance of Symbolic Programming

Data structures, code fragments, graphics, documents, interfaces... Over the three decades it was being incubated, the Wolfram Language discovered more and more ways to apply symbolic programming.

Wolfram|Alpha: Bringing in the Real World

Wolfram|Alpha made vast real-world knowledge computable—so it could be integrated into the Wolfram Language to make the language talk not just about formal constructs, but also about the real world.

Billions of Lines of Code

Billions of lines of what's now Wolfram Language code are inside software systems around the world—with tens of millions inside Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language itself.

A Language for the Ages

The Wolfram Language is clean enough to have been able to maintain compatibility all the way back to its earliest origins in Mathematica 1.0 from 1988.

Ahead of Its Time for Three Decades

The Wolfram Language has originated many new programming ideas—some of which have influenced languages developed over the past three decades, but many of which remain only in the Wolfram Language.

Buzzword Compliance

The Wolfram Language is both old and new: with a long history, but full of new ideas. It has many attributes that map well onto common modern programming language buzzwords—as well as many attributes that are not familiar from other languages.

The Wolfram Language Is...

(among other things)

Knowledge Based

(Our own buzzword) As one of its core principles, the Wolfram Language has extensive knowledge—about algorithms and about the world—built in.